TFE The Network

In keeping with the spirit of "Upfronts Week" in which networks announce their new seasons, I thought I would do the same. It's common place now for blogs to have "series" but I am proud to say I was one of the early adopters of this 'I'm my own network!' approach. I enjoy the creation and evolution of series and it seems that barring a couple of them over the years, you (the active audience) enjoy them too.


The Film Experience will always be somewhat random since spontaneity is oxygen (and other less pleasurable reasons also interfere). Sometimes ambitions collapse before execution due to lack of funding, corporate slavery, cat illness, backlog of unfinished business or loss of passport. But series and general structure help keep things on track regardless; Attempts at discipline never hurt anyone. So here's what we hope is coming up...

• Sunday: new series Take Three (5.23) returning Naked Gold Man - weekly contemporary Oscar race discussions (5.30)
  
• Monday: returning Reader Request, Mad Men @ The Movies, Monologues (5.31)
• Tuesday: returning Curio, Tuesday Top Ten (5.25)
• Wednesday: new series Day Job (6.2)
  
• Thursday: returning Modern Maestros (6.10)
• Friday: new series Posterized (5.21)
  
• Saturday: Day of Rest (Vitamin D deficiency alert! Must experience sunlight this summer)
  
  
  
• FLOATING: returning (various days) yes no maybe so, Who's That Girl?, Streep@60, June Brides, Best Pictures From the Outside In, podcast, Great Moments in Screen Bitchery
  
  
• IMPERMANENT HIATUS | SERIES HEAVEN | LIMBO: A History Of..., Hump Day Hotties, Breakfast With..., Cast This, Kissing, Signatures, Screen Queens, Mezamishii, April Showers, May Flowers, 20:07, Vanity Fair's Hollywood, Musical of the Month
  

Will valiantly attempt to wrap up the long delayed Film Bitch Awards for 2009 next week and there's a few exciting industry interviews coming up. Stay tuned and join in the obsessive merriment.

If you don't comment, we never know what you're thinking. If you have praise don't hold back... pour it on thick. If you have gripes, keep it to y--- kidding! Always be constructive in your criticisms if you have them. Here and elsewhere. The Film Experience wants to be a happy place. Happy happy joy joy.

Breakfast With... Faye Dunaway

I've always loved this portrait of Faye Dunaway on March 29th 1977, the morning after her Oscar win for Network.


I can't tell what she's eating here (yogurt, cottage cheese, lemons with tea... what is it?). But she looks too tired for masticating anyway. I suspect there was only sipping and nibbling after the brief skimming of headlines.

Which Oscar winner do you wish you could have had breakfast with after their big night?

In case you missed it: my Network respective
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Got Link?

StinkyLulu Oscar Smackdown 1976: teen hookers, religious kooks, and women scorned
Towleroad Interesting. James Schamus (of Focus Features) responds to that Hollywood Reporter article I linked to yesterday on Milk's marketing campaign
Hot Blog wowed by Milk
CHUD How far we haven't come since the days of Harvey Milk
MetaCafe you have approximately two weeks to make a 30 second commercial for Australia (the movie) and win a trip to NYC and Australia. Go...
Wired on flailing third parts and Chris Nolan's hesitation re: Batman³ (which is actually Batman8... so relax, fella)
Thompson on Hollywood campaigns for golden boys begin: first up WALL•E & The Dark Knight
Oscar and the City a poll regarding and a shot from the set of next year's musical Nine
MTV Huh? Robert Pattison (Twilight) as Salvador Dali?

and to sign off on this Milk-y link roundup, here's Diego Luna and Emile Hirsch at last night's premiere @ the Castro

[img src]

Network (1976)

A reader request (long time in coming --my apologies Chris!)

One thing I suspect about director Sidney Lumet: He likes his drama super sized. I'm talking Empire State Building big. No 800 lbs gorillas in the room please, make it King Kong. Give them 16 tons of drama. Lumet wants grunting, sweating, lunging, screaming, gargantuan desperate drama like the kind you get in Dog Day Afternoon, Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead and Serpico. Never mind 12 Angry Men. How about 1 Angry Man, Sidney Lumet himself, and in the case of Network -- arguably his best film -- one angry fictional man named Howard Beale" (Peter Finch). Network eventually gets around to naming Beale the “mad prophet of the airwaves” but it’s also a self descriptive tag. This movie is mad as hell and prophetic, too. Network is Howard Beale and Howard Beale is Network. This impressively large but also miniature film --it's not hard to imagine it as a stage play --swings wildly from mood to mood just like its bipolar madman.

Peter Finch is 'mad as hell' in his Oscar winning role

A lot of movies steal from Network but I love the borrowing that it does right out of the gate, in ominiscient detached voiceover.

In his time Howard Beale had been a mandarin of television. The grand old man of news with a hot rating of 16 and a 28 audience share. In 1969 however his fortunes began to decline. He fell to a 22 share. The following year his wife died and he was left a childless widower with an 8 rating and a 12 share.

That calm voiceover, giving numbers as much if not more weight as the man's personal life, has already begun the chilling process of reduction. It's overtly reminiscent of both All About Eve's arch view of the theater world and Sunset Boulevard's ghost-eye view of Hollywood. Network’s target is television. Is it boldly proclaiming itself the final third of the Holy Trinity of Self-Loathing Showbiz Pictures? Whatever the intent, it moves with utter confidence, thereby forcing itself into the godhead.

Read the rest...

Return and report. Have you tuned into Network recently?
(click here for fresh posts)
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AFI: The New Top 100 List

The Revised Greatest American Films List
I'm happy to see Blade Runner, Nashville, and Cabaret added. They all hold high rank in my own favorites listing. What say ye about this new lineup? (To be helpful I've added their previous AFI ranking to the right --big changes in bold)

1. "Citizen Kane" (1941) same
2. "The Godfather" (1972) 3
3. "Casablanca" (1942) 2
4. "Raging Bull" (1980) 24
5. "Singin' in the Rain" (1952) 10
6. "Gone With the Wind" (1939) 4
7. "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962) 5
8. "Schindler's List" (1993) 9
9. "Vertigo" (1958) 61
10. "The Wizard of Oz" (1939) 6


11. "City Lights" (1931) 76
12. "The Searchers" (1956) 96
13. "Star Wars" (1977) 15
14. "Psycho" (1960) 18
15. "2001: A Space Odyssey" (1968) 22
16. "Sunset Boulevard" (1950) 12
17. "The Graduate" (1967) 7
18. "The General" (1927) new
19. "On the Waterfront" (1954) 8
20. "It's a Wonderful Life" (1946) 11

21. "Chinatown" (1974) 19
22. "Some Like It Hot" (1959) 14
23. "The Grapes of Wrath" (1940) 21
24. "E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial" (1982) 25
25. "To Kill a Mockingbird" (1962) 34
26. "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (1939) 29
27. "High Noon" (1952) 33
28. "All About Eve" (1950) 16
29. "Double Indemnity" (1944) 38
30. "Apocalypse Now" (1979) 28

31. "The Maltese Falcon" (1941) 23
32. "The Godfather, Part II" (1974) same
33. "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1975) 20
34. "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" (1937) 49
35. "Annie Hall" (1977) 31
36. "The Bridge on the River Kwai" (1957) 13
37. "The Best Years of Our Lives" (1946) same
38. "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1948) 30
39. "Dr. Strangelove" (1964) 26
40. "The Sound of Music" (1965) 55

41. "King Kong" (1933) 43
42. "Bonnie and Clyde" (1967) 27
43. "Midnight Cowboy" (1969) 36
44. "The Philadelphia Story" (1940) 51
45. "Shane" (1953) 69
46. "It Happened One Night" (1934) 35
47. "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1951) 45
48. "Rear Window" (1954) 42
49. "Intolerance" (1916) new
50. "Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring" (2001) new

51. "West Side Story" (1961) 41
52. "Taxi Driver" (1976) 47
53. "The Deer Hunter" (1978) 79
54. "M*A*S*H" (1970) 56
55. "North by Northwest" (1959) 40
56. "Jaws" (1975) 48
57. "Rocky" (1976) 78
58. "The Gold Rush" (1925) 74
59. "Nashville" (1975) new
60. "Duck Soup" (1933) 85

61. "Sullivan's Travels" (1941) new
62. "American Graffiti" (1973) 77
63. "Cabaret" (1972) new
64. "Network" (1976) 66
65. "The African Queen" (1951) 17
66. "Raiders of the Lost Ark" (1981) 60
67. "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" (1966) new
68. "Unforgiven" (1992) 98
69. "Tootsie" (1982) 62
70. "A Clockwork Orange" (1971) 46 (i still don't understand how this one qualifies as American)

71. "Saving Private Ryan" (1998) new
72. "The Shawshank Redemption" (1994) new
73. "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" (1969) 50
74. "The Silence of the Lambs" (1991) 65
75. "In the Heat of the Night" (1967) new
76. "Forrest Gump" (1994) 71
77. "All the President's Men" (1976) new
78. "Modern Times" (1936) 81
79. "The Wild Bunch" (1969) 80
80. "The Apartment" (1960) 93

81. "Spartacus" (1960) new
82. "Sunrise" (1927) new
83. "Titanic" (1997) new
84. "Easy Rider" (1969) 88
85. "A Night at the Opera" (1935) new
86. "Platoon" (1986) 83
87. "12 Angry Men" (1957) new
88. "Bringing Up Baby" (1938) 97
89. "The Sixth Sense" (1999) new
90. "Swing Time" (1936) new

91. "Sophie's Choice" (1982) new
92. "Goodfellas" (1990) 94
93. "The French Connection" (1971) 70
94. "Pulp Fiction" (1994) 95
95. "The Last Picture Show" (1971) new
96. "Do the Right Thing" (1989) new
97. "Blade Runner" (1982) new
98. "Yankee Doodle Dandy" (1942) 100
99. "Toy Story" (1995) new
100. "Ben-Hur" (1959) 72

<---they're tearing him apart: James Dean lost BOTH his spots on the top 100. And Monty Clift too. Argh. The films that fell out were...Doctor Zhivago #39, North by Northwest #40, Birth of a Nation #44, From Here To Eternity #52, Amadeus #53, All Quiet on the Western Front #54, The Third Man #57, Fantasia #58, Rebel Without a Cause #59, Stagecoach #63, Close Encounters of the Third Kind #64, The Manchurian Candidate #67, An American in Paris #68, Wuthering Heights #73, Dances With Wolves #75, Giant #82, Fargo #84, Mutiny on the Bounty #86, Frankenstein #87, Patton #89, The Jazz Singer #90, My Fair Lady #91, A Place in the Sun #92, Guess Who's Coming To Dinner #99

weirdest entry: Sophie's Choice... almost never listed in any "best of", apart from Meryl Streep's astonishing performance, is in the top 100 --They collectively name it the 6th best of the entire 80s decade. Whaaaa?

lesson learned: nothing below the top 30 is ever safe. It all depends on who they poll and which way the winds blow.